Wheel carriers of this type are used especially in motor vehicles with front-wheel drive. The wheel suspension of a driven front wheel also must assume a steering function, besides the wheel-stabilizing function. Among other things, ball joints, which are called support or guiding joints, are used for this purpose, depending on the intended use.
To establish a connection between the wheel carrier and the pivot pin inserted into the wheel carrier, the use of a pivot pin clamping joint has been known from the state of the art.
The wheel carrier has an area that is slotted in some sections, and this area passes over into a mount shaped complementary to the end piece of the pivot pin. The wheel carrier thus has two limitedly elastic clamping jaws on the wheel side. These clamping jaws are traversed by a clamping bolt. The tightening torque of the clamping bolt determines the strength of the clamping joint.
The usually cylindrical end piece of the pivot pin is inserted into the complementary mount in the wheel carrier and is fixed by tightening the clamping bolt.
In addition, other variants or embodiments have been known as well. Thus, the pivot pin of a prior-art guiding joint may be connected to the wheel carrier by clamping, and the transversely seated clamping bolt engages an annular groove of the cylindrical pin at the same time.
The pin can be prevented by these measures from automatically falling out of its mount in the case of the unintended or accidental loosening of the clamping bolt.
The side of the pivot pin located opposite the end piece is equipped with a joint ball, which is mounted in a ball-and-socket joint housing in the known manner. The ball-and-socket joint housing is also connected to another component of the motor vehicle, e.g., a tie rod.
The wheel carrier is exposed to all effects of weather nearly unprotected during driving. It has been found in prior-art designs of wheel carriers that contaminants and moisture penetrate into the slotted area and thus they can reach the pivot pin as a consequence of the exposed clamping joint.
Such contaminants, e.g., water spray, dirt or salts, cause corrosion of the wheel carrier and the pivot pin during the use of a motor vehicle, and this corrosion may lead to an accelerated wear of the entire assembly unit as well as of individual parts of this assembly unit. Thus, increased degradation of the sealing materials may also start as a consequence of the sometimes high corrosiveness of these media.
As a result of this, it was also observed in some cases that moisture was able to penetrate into the ball-and-socket joint and destroy it within a very short time due to the corrosion occurring at the pivot pin.